You have probably heard by now about the iPhone 4′s infamous death grip. Hold the phone in a particular fashion, and your signal will plummet leading to calls being dropped. When users complained, Steve Jobs’ famously quipped, “Just avoid holding it in that way”.

Earlier today, Nokia jibed at Apple by showing off different ways a Nokia phone can be held. Head over to the official Nokia Conversations blog for Nokia’s brilliant sneer. Here are some selected excerpts:

We’ve been looking around and noticed there are many ways to hold your Nokia device. Whether you’re left-handed or right-handed, there’s no shortage of ways to hold your phone…

…The cupPopular with smaller devices, and typically comfortable for longer phone calls, the cup basically enables you to cup the phone with your whole hand. This might result in much of the phone’s edges being covered and the back of the device sitting snugly in the palm of your hand but don’t be concerned about this, it won’t impact the device’s performance. QWERTY device users will also find this handy for tapping out messages and navigating the phone, as the thumb is typically left free with much of the device’s weight being carried by the palm….

…The four edge gripRegardless of the size of your hands, the Four Edge Grip (FEG, for short) is a universal grip which involves all of your fingers and thumb, each having hold of one edge of the device (the middle and ring fingers actually double up to provide an opposing force to the much stronger thumb). You’ll find a little gap develops between the back of the phone and the palm, which is useful. For something.

We’ve found any of the four grips mentioned above to be both comfortable and as you can see, offer no signal degradation whatsoever. This isn’t a feature you’ll only find on high-end Nokia devices either. It’s something that’s been a part of pretty much every Nokia device ever made (perhaps with the exception of that teardrop 3G one, which was a bit ridiculous).

The key function on any Nokia device is its ability to make phone calls. After all, that’s why we know them universally as mobile phones (or smart phones, feature phones or mobile computers though the same grip styles work for those, too). One of the main things we’ve found about the 1 billion plus Nokia devices that are in use today is that when making a phone call, people generally tend to hold their phone like aâ€¦. well, like a phone. Providing a wide range of methods and grips for people to hold their phones, without interfering with the antennae, has been an essential feature of every device Nokia has built.

Of course, feel free to ignore all of the above because realistically, you’re free to hold your Nokia device any way you like. And you won’t suffer any signal loss. Cool, huh?

It’s always amusing to see companies mocking competitors, especially when done right. Motorola parodied the iPhone to hilarious effect in their iDoes ad-campaign. Opera created comic gold with their parody of Google Chrome. Nokia’s attempt is another brilliant example of competitors having some harmless fun at each other’s expense. Of course, the fact that Nokia and Apple are currently engaged in bitter lawsuits against each other does make things a bit more interesting.

Pallab De is a blogger from India who has a soft spot for anything techie. He loves trying out new software and spends most of his day breaking and fixing his PC. Pallab loves participating in the social web; he has been active in technology forums since he was a teenager and is an active user of both twitter (@indyan) and facebook .